The November Battleground Poll and America
By Bruce Walker
web posted January 10, 2005
I have written often about the one public opinion poll which has
proven most reliable and which has provided a hidden, but vital,
bit of information about America: the Battleground Poll. This poll
is one of the few which are the collaboration of two partisan
polling organizations, in this case a Republican polling
organization, The Tarrance Group, and a Democrat polling
organization, Lake, Snell, Perry and Associates.
This collaboration provides a double safeguard of reliability.
Polling organizations, over the long run, want to be accurate -
this is true even if they have an agenda. Who believes polls which
are wrong? But the short term interests of partisan clients tends
to make even objective minds biased. Because the Battleground
Poll is a long term process and because it has equal input from
polling organizations with an avowedly partisan affiliation, the
results tend to be very, very good.
How good? In 2004, it was very good indeed. The last
Battleground Poll projected that President Bush would get 51.2
per cent of the vote (he got 51.1 per cent of the vote) and that
Senator Kerry would get 47.8 per cent of the vote (he got 47.9
per cent of the vote.) The 2000 Battleground Poll projected that
then-Governor Bush would get 49 per cent of the vote and then-
Vice President Gore would get 47 per cent of the vote. That
very close prediction was the worst of a very good run.
In 1996, the Battleground Poll projected that Bill Clinton would
get 49 per cent of the vote (he got 49.2 per cent of the vote);
that Bob Dole would get 40 per cent of the vote (he got 40.7
per cent of the vote); and that Ross Perot would get 9 per cent
of the vote (he got 8.4 per cent of the vote.) In 1992, the
Battleground Poll projected that Bill Clinton would get 43 per
cent of the vote (he got 43.0 per cent of the vote - right on the
money); it projected that George H. Bush would get 37 per cent
of the vote (he got 37.4 per cent of the vote); and it projected
that Ross Perot would get 19 per cent of the vote (he got 18.9
per cent of the vote.)
Not only is the Battleground Poll the most accurate poll of the
many spewed out almost daily during election season, but it does
something very useful: it provides audiences with all the questions
asked and all the answers. These internals have been the reason
why I have written about the Battleground Poll so often over the
last several years. The internals explain why Democrats ought to
be profoundly worried about the position and the direction of
their party.
Question D3 is the same question that appears in the internals of
every Battleground Poll. The list is read and it is rotated to
prevent bias. In August 2004, sixty percent of Americans
considered themselves "very conservative" or "somewhat
conservative" while only thirty-five percent considered
themselves "very liberal" or "somewhat liberal." In September
2003, fifty-nine percent of Americans considered themselves
"very conservative" or "somewhat conservative" while only thirty-
five percent of Americans considered themselves "very liberal" or
"somewhat liberal." The three prior Battleground Poll results
showed a similar gap between conservatives and liberals.
What did the responses to Question D34 before the November
2004 election show? Sixty percent of Americans considered
themselves either "very conservative" or "somewhat
conservative" while only thirty-three percent of Americans
considered themselves "very liberal" or "somewhat liberal." The
gap persists over polls and over years, and more: the gap is
actually widening.
What ought to concern Democrats is that the number of
Americans who self-identify as "very conservative" has risen
steadily from fifteen percent before the November 2002 election
to seventeen percent in September 2003 to twenty percent
before the November 2004 election, even as the number of
conservatives has remained at fifty-nine or sixty percent of the
population.
The number of people who consider themselves "very liberal," by
contrast, is a meager eight percent. What does this mean? Not
only is the gap between self-identified conservatives and liberals
widened over the last several years, but the conservatives have
become more conservative while the liberals have become less
liberal.
And what does that mean? It means that the "middle" of
American politics, which is actually somewhere in the realm of
"moderate conservative" is moving farther to the Right, toward a
more robust and unapologetic conservatism. It means that simply
being a liberal is, more and more, synonymous with being an
extremist. It means that conservatives and other normal people
are no longer intimidated by the tight faced, menacing glares of
the establishment Left, the shrinking Left, the vanishing Left.
Bruce Walker is a contributing editor with Enter Stage Right. He
is also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The
Common Conservative.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com